Tag Archives: sport

Azerbaijan wants to change name of F1 race

OCT. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The management of Azerbaijan’s Formula One city circuit said they want to change the name of Baku’s grand prix race. Formula One held its first race in Azerbaijan in June, under the European Grand Prix moniker which has previously been assigned to races not fixed to specific geographic area. Azerbaijan, which sees sport as a way of promoting its brand, wants to rename the race as the Azerbaijani Grand Prix, in the style of most of the other races.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Turkmenistan to design golf course

OCT. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US golf champion Jack Nicklaus flew to Ashgabat to meet with Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to discuss designing Turkmenistan’s first golf course. Mr Nicklaus’s company, Nicklaus Design, has mulled building a golf course in Turkmenistan, near the border with Iran, for the past couple of years.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Azerbaijan’s IBA signs promotional deal with Juventus football club

SEPT. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), majority owned by the government, signed a promotional deal with Italian football club Juventus, continuing Azerbaijan’s strategy of using sport to promote itself.

Juventus released a photo of its executives meeting IBA officials in Baku, posing with one of its famous black and white shirts.

Under the terms of the deal, the value of which has not been announced, IBA will be able to use Juventus logos and branding to promote its products. Juventus will also be committed to opening and running a football academy in Baku.

Juventus’ head of global partnerships and corporate revenues Giorgio Ricci said that the deal with IBA was the fifth regional sponsorship deal that the club had concluded in the last 16 months.

“We are proud to be working in a country of great potential such as Azerbaijan, and to collaborate with an organisation as prestigious as the International Bank of Azerbaijan,” he said.

For IBA, the timing is less auspicious. Azerbaijan’s economy has been under pressure because of a sharp fall in oil prices and analysts have said it will fall into a recession for the first time since 2009.

Banks have in particular come under pressure because of their previous loose lending arrangements which have now generated mountains of bad debt. This bad debt portfolio was exacerbated by a 50% fall in the value of the manat last year.

In July, a court in Azerbaijan also convicted IBA’s former CEO, Jahangir Hajiyev, of money laundering.

Sport, though, has become an important outlet for Azerbaijan to market itself. Azerbaijan had sponsored Spanish team Atletico Madrid and Baku is one of the 13 host cities for Euro 2020 football tournament.

The Azerbaijani government owns a 55% stake in IBA. IBA accounts for around 60% of all lending in Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

ITF bannes corrupt Uzbek officials

SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Tennis Federation banned for life two Uzbek officials for betting offences. The two officials, Sherzod Hasanov and Arkhip Molotyagin,communicated via mobile phone the scores of games they were officiating to a third party, before recording them into the official electronic score- board, allowing illegal betting.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

Athletes from C.Asia and S.Caucasus win medals at Rio Olympics

AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the Olympics in Rio, Uzbekistan won four gold medals, including three in boxing. Kazakhstan once again pulled in a decent haul, winning three golds, including a first ever swimming win, five silvers and nine bronzes. Tajikistan also won its first gold medal since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Dilshod Nazarov won gold in the hammer, becoming an instant national hero in Tajikistan. In the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan won a gold medal in taekwondo, Georgia won golds in wrestling and weightlifting and Armenia won a wrestling gold, its first for 20 years.

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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Manchester United signs Armenian striker

JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Manchester United finalised the £26m ($33.7m) signing of Armenia’s Henrikh Mkhitaryan, a deal that puts Armenian football at the forefront of the planned renaissance of one of England’s most famous and most successful clubs.

Mkhitaryan, 27, will be the first Armenian player to play in the English Premier League, widely credited with being the most competitive football league in the world, and only the second player from the South Caucasus. Georgi Kinkladze, a Georgian midfielder whose dribbling skills left opposition players flat-footed, played for Manchester City in the Premier League in the 1995/6 season.

Unveiling Mkhitaryan at Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground, manager Jose Mourinho said that his new attacking midfielder will make an immediate impact.

“Henrikh is a real team player with great skill, vision and also has a good eye for goal,” he said.

Mourinho, who took over as the Manchester United manager in the summer, has been given the task of rebuilding the team after they finished fifth last season, missing out on a place in the UEFA Champions League, Europe’s top club football competition.

Mkhitaryan, who had played in Germany for Borussia Dortmund, said it was a dream come true.

“I am excited to play for a club with such an illustrious history and hope to be part of it for a long time,” he said.

Mkhitaryan was born in Yerevan in 1989. His father was Hamlet Mkhi taryan, one of the most prolific Armenian strikers in the 1980s. Mkhitaryan is now considered one of the best Armenian players and has won international 59 caps, the first when he was 17-years-old, and scored 19 goals.

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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Azerbaijani and Uzbek weightlifters face ban

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Azerbaijani and Uzbek weightlifting teams are both facing a ban from competing in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this summer after their athletes failed a series of drugs test, media reported. Weightlifters from Russia and Kazakhstan have already received a ban.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Nico Rosberg wins F1 in Azerbaijani capital

JUNE 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – German driver Nico Rosberg won the first F1 Grand Prix in Baku. President Ilham Aliyev wanted to host the Grand Prix to boost the profile of Azerbaijan. His critics, though, accused him of wasting money and hosting an expensive vanity project while Azerbaijan’s economy shrinks.

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(News report from Issue No. 286, published on June 24 2016)

Kazakh champion weightlifter banned from Rio Games after failing drugs test

ALMATY, JUNE 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ilya Ilin, a sporting hero in Kazakhstan after winning a weightlifting gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, has been banned from the Olympics in Rio later this year after more evidence emerged that he had taked performance enhancing drugs.

The new evidence apparently showed that he took the drugs for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. This comes on top of other evidence that showed he took drugs at the London Olympics in 2012.

Three other Kazakh weightlifters — Svetlana Podobedova, Maia Maneza, Zulfiya Chinshanlo — have also been found guilty of doping at the London 2012 Olympics.

Kazakhstan won seven gold medals at the London Olympics, its best ever haul. Four of these medals were in weightlifting.

Mr Ilin has denied the drug-taking charges and instead said a change in how the samples are taken and tested was to blame for an incorrect positive test.

News of his suspension spread across Kazakhstan, shocking and angering people. Kazakh politicians lined up to give him their support.

“Whatever the decision taken on the athlete Ilya Ilin, he has earned our support as a leading sportsman and patriot of Kazakhstan,” said Kassym Jomart-Tokayev, chairman of Kazakhstan’s Senate.

And it was a similar story from ordinary Kazakhs.

Aizhan, a resident of Almaty, said that he had uploaded Ilin’s picture on to his Facebook site as a show of support. He said: “Honestly, I am very upset with this scandal and even more with how it is covered by foreign media. I believe his words.”

Bolat Mukashev, who works in the public sector, said: “I am very upset and support Ilya. The whole country believed in him and now this. Of course there is no smoke without fire but nobody denies that this is a trap.”

For Kazakhstan, the seven gold medals won at the London Olympics were a huge boost to their national pride and self-image. It had been part of the government’s policy to promote Kazakhstan through sport. It recruited weightlifters from China and tennis players and athletes from Russia to boost its cause.

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(News report from Issue No. 286, published on June 24 2016)

Editorial: Azeri sport sponsorship

JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -Viewers watching the UEFA European football championships in France will have noticed, it’s impossible not to, SOCAR sponsorship rolling across the advertising hoarding on the side of the pitch.

Even in a recession, SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, finds the cash to sponsor a major sporting event. This weekend, too, Baku hosts its inaugural Formula 1 Grand Prix. Last summer the city hosted the first European Games.

The total bill for these lavish affairs is likely to run to the billions of dollars. Of course the advertising has raised Azerbaijan’s profile but to what end? SOCAR doesn’t need to become a household name in Europe; athletics and motorsport are hardly integral to the Azerbaijani national character.

Most of these sporting deals would have been organised before the collapse in oil prices that has pressured Azerbaijan’s economy, tipped it into recession and squeezed jobs. Ordinary Azerbaijanis are not having a good time, as shown by nationwide protests earlier this year. Signs of resentment are being more easily picked up.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)